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Over 750kW of cooling between 65 machines, installed in under a week and removed inside of two days… twice!

The 2017 Supercars tour saw Active Air’s events division take on the street circuit racing on the Gold Coast’s Surfers Paradise and the newly minted Newcastle harbour and foreshore track.

The temporary three-storey structures presented several challenges. The main areas requiring conditioning were the corporate suites and race control.

With the pits located below and race control above, the corporate suites suffered for headroom meaning that overhead duct runs were not suitable. As such, the customer had specified the use of high wall split air conditioners, sixty of them!

The use of DX split type AC’s added additional complexity by introducing refrigerant handling protocols. With so many of these machines to install, we had to rethink our approach to this machine type.

Due to the scheduling of the races and the time taken to erect, remove and rebuild the structure, we had to come up with a system that would be robust, transport well and be extremely fast to install and remove.

The use of pressure rated flexible hosing fitted to the indoor units made the physical pipework easy and installing isolation valves preserved refrigerant and allowed for rapid commissioning.

10A weatherproof inlets were mounted on the outdoor unit frames so a standard extension lead could be used and quick connect weatherproof plugs took care of the interconnecting wiring, ensuring correct polarity.

Both indoor and outdoor units had interlocking frames designed to allow for neat stacking, transport, hanging and protecting the machines from knocks, bumps, and scratches.
While we were able to control our workspace while building up the machines in-house, getting to the site provided different challenges.

Arriving on site early in the piece meant that our team had to work on an active construction site. While the building was only temporary, the site was run as well as any permanent construction site with WHSS protocols and systems often required and audited.

Having experienced personnel on site, including qualified refrigeration mechanics from start to finish, meant that work progressed smoothly and our [internal] procedures were easily implemented and communicated to the principal contractor.

Aside from the hot weather that preceded the Gold Coast 600s, the installations exceeded our expectations and were well appreciated by the customer. This was the fastest installation they had seen to date, and the kicker was that we managed to do it in half the time the second time around in Newcastle.

60 high wall splits installed and commissioned inside of 5 days!

ACTIVEAIR

Active Air was founded in 1972.

We have consistently grown and evolved both in size and service offerings on the back of an obsession to provide outstanding service and maintain excellent relationships with our clients.